Intellectual virtue

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Intellectual virtues are character traits necessary for right action and correct thinking. They include: a sense of justice, perseverance, integrity, humility, empathy, intellectual courage, confidence in reason, and autonomy.

Aristotle

Aristotle analyzed virtues into moral and intellectual virtues (or dianoetic virtues, from the Greek aretai dianoetikai). In the Posterior Analytics and Nicomachean Ethics he identified five intellectual virtues as the five ways the soul arrives at truth by affirmation or denial. He grouped them into three classes:

• Theoretical
• Sophia - wisdom of the eternal and unchangeable, philosophical wisdom.
• Episteme - scientific knowledge, empirical knowledge.
• Nous - intuitive understanding.
• Practical
• Phronesis - practical wisdom/prudence.
• Productive
• Techne - craft knowledge, art, skill.

Subjacent intellectual virtues in Aristotle are:

• Euboulia - deliberating well, deliberative excellence; thinking properly about the right end.
• Sunesis - understanding, sagacity, astuteness, consciousness of why something is as it is. For example, the understanding you have of why a situation is as it is, prior to having phronesis.
• Gnomê - judgement and consideration; allowing us to make equitable or fair decisions.
• Deinotes - cleverness; the ability to carry out actions so as to achieve a goal.

References

• Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics Book VI.
• Thomas Hobbes On Man, Being the First Part of Leviathan. Chapter VIII: Of the Virtues Commonly Called Intellectual, and Their Contrary Defects
• R. M. Paul Critical thinking: What every person needs to survive in a rapidly changing world, (Rev. 2nd ed.). Santa Rosa, CA: Foundation for Critical Thinking, 1992.
• Michael DePaul et Linda Zagzebski, Intellectual Virtue, Oxford, Oxford U. Press. 2003.

See also

• Intellectual dishonesty
• Critical thinking
• Paideia
• Virtue ethics
• Epistemic virtue

External links

• Virtue Epistemology, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Critical Thinking Glossary: An Educator's Guide to Critical Thinking Terms and Concept

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Last updated on Tuesday October 23, 2007 at 09:42:32 PDT (GMT -0700)
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